Contrast, Compare
by Dark-heika
Summary: Reincarnation!fic three-shot. Ryou Bakura thinks on power and where it would take him, Malik Ishtar rejects reality and tries to substitute his own, and Yugi Mutou knows all good things come to those who wait. No pairings.
1. Memory

Ryou lay at the edge of the training ground, hands folded behind his head in a position a certain Nara would normally assume. So many thoughts, so little time.

This was always going to be his story, wasn't it? Born into a (clan, family, village) of thieves, only for them to be slaughtered while he was still young. He'd learn from their ghosts and thrive for the sole purpose of revenge, provided there was someone to take revenge on.

(He hadn't had anyone to blame in his second life. The other driver had been killed as well, and that was probably a good thing. He might have been a lot closer to his original self if he hadn't, and wasn't that a scary thought?)

Always without a home (the apartment he had was barely lived in, and his compound here hadn't been home since it had been dyed in his clan's blood), always alone. Always a thief. Wealth, secrets, techniques.

At least his hair wasn't white again. If there were a physical symptom of his curse, then he might just have resigned himself to it.

He'd seen where revenge could take him. Slain by the demon he'd called himself in his first life, soul torn in two. One half of that soul mixed with it until there wasn't a difference between them, eating his lighter half from the inside out when they met in his second life.

It wasn't until it had been wrenched from the demon and unbound from the items that he could be whole again, even if the shadows still wouldn't let him go.

Even after, he hadn't shaken old habits. Even after all that he'd been through, he was still the King of Thieves at heart. But he'd taken to sating that impulse with something new: secrets. Information, knowledge - the little nothings people buried their hearts and forgot about, waiting for him to unearth.

(It was safer that way, too. A secret told wasn't a secret anymore, grew less valuable as more people knew it. And what thief went about devaluing his own loot? No, secrets were safe with him. Just not from him.

Malik stopped trying to plan surprise parties after the first few years for a reason.)

He'd never been caught, either. Not in his first life, not in his second. He'd stolen things no one else could, from ludicrous amounts of treasure to secrets buried behind every barrier imaginable to magic to souls. Even now, he felt the shadows just a whim away from his fingers, the power created by his first family's flesh granted to him by blood and by soul.

All of Konoha, all of the elemental countries were already his. He just had to reach out and take them.

But he didn't _want_ them.

When he'd realized he couldn't _not_ follow in his first self's footsteps... he'd looked back over both his lives and thought about what he could do to make sure he never made the worst of those mistakes again. The conclusion was surprisingly simple.

Power corrupts. It was the one thing he'd never take for himself again.

And right there was his problem.

To avenge the clan, he needed power. Uchiha Itachi was a prodigy. He himself was distinctly average in comparison, even when he'd been all about power. But he hadn't had Shadow Magic at the time, either. Couldn't take that into account.

With that, killing the last of his family would be... too easy. Just a game away.

But the shadows were also dangerous. Too dangerous. Taking power was unpredictable, but he knew exactly where using the shadows as his source took him.

Was revenge worth the risk?

... No.

Two lives tainted were enough.

Uchiha Sasuke left the training ground early.

* * *

A/N: You can consider these as taking place in separate continuities, or you can consider them the one and the same. And depending on the reaction I get, I might leave this as-is, or I might decide to write a full fic for it. Both are entirely up to you, my dear readers and darling reviewers.

On another note, writing this was fun. There are a lot of parallels between the situations of the three I chose to have our favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! characters fill in for. And for all that, they're different from their counterparts in some core way that provides the most amazing contrast, don't you think?

Our favorite thief king f*cked up _hard_ in his first life. Yeah, he has a damn good reason for it (I wouldn't be thinking straight, either, if my entire family was murdered in a cruel and unusual way right before my eyes and revenge was literally the only thing I had left to live for), but still - who the hell summons a demon and expects it to end remotely well?

And funnily enough, Ryou spent the bulk of his second life paying through the nose for it. You'd think he'd be wanting to stay as far away from making that little mistake again as he could. Of course, he has a lot of his other in there, too, and some habits just don't break. So I think this is a good compromise between the two personalities myself. You?


	2. Fate

_Step._

 _Step._

 _Step._

 _Turn._

 _Step._

 _Step._

 _Step._

 _Turn._

Malik hissed, pacing his room from one end to the other. He wouldn't hate them. He _refused_ to hate them.

(No one could hate like he could.)

(He didn't want to hate again.)

 _Step._

Just because you sealed away something didn't mean it was _gone_. The Shadow Realm was as good a chain as anything, but the Shadows dealt in souls, and his other was a part of his mind. There was no separate soul to banish.

 _Step._

And the Shadows had always come easily to him. Like a puppy, eager for affection - no coaxing was needed. If he ever decided, even for a moment, that he wanted that hatred _back_...

 _Step._

 _Turn._

There weren't any God Cards in this place. The people here had rules, ideas of what was possible and what was not, and as usual, the Shadows (dancing at his fingers) weren't taken into account. If required, a fatal, multi-hour long game could take but a few seconds, and his other was a _master_ of manipulating games.

There would be no stopping him.

 _Step._

Family always was a big thing to him. Carve hieroglyphs into his back, go ahead, but hurt Rishid and you were dead. His father was dead because of his new family, and his cousin suffered... well, not as much as he had. But she wasn't strong enough, and he could see what it was doing to the girl.

 _Step._

It was a little strange for him. The Tomb Keepers locked themselves away just like his new family did, and while they weren't as (strictclosedoffcold) distant, they always stayed away from him before his father's death, and afterwards he hadn't cared to deal with them.

 _Step._

He'd had cousins in his last life, too. Lots of them. They'd helped to pin him to a cold stone slab and set him up for weeks of pain.

He'd had a brother and a sister and loved them both, though, even if they weren't there for him here.

 _Turn._

(Maybe it was his turn, to be the big brother now.)

 _Step_.

His father, in a series of night in which he'd carved his family's legacy into his own son's skin, had spawned enough hate and pain and rage to form its own personality, something that could not understand anything else. The comfort, the calm his siblings had brought him had shelved that pain.

Until he'd seen Rishid on the ground and hurt and maybe dead and it was his father's fault. Then his hate had reached a new level, leaving him open to his other's manipulations. Because after that night? He filled a separate personality with his hate and still had enough left to turn him murderous.

 _Step_.

(He never had named his other. Yugi and Ryou had, sharing their names with them for other people, though between them each had used something else. But his other would never be anything more than that. He _refused_ to let him be anything else.)

 _Step_.

(He'd never forgiven his father, either.)

 _Turn._

This new family was _so similar_ to the old. If Malik weren't living it, maybe he'd have laughed. They walked in the light, yet caged themselves all the same. They branded their own kin, made them slaves, and kept a single line unchained. The Seal was a horrible fate, acknowledged by such by the main family, and yet...

 _Step_.

He should talk to his cousin tomorrow. The younger was a brat, but the older was... nice. Maybe giving himself something (anything) to hang onto would help him. He couldn't let himself keep hating. Without Rishid to snap him out of it...

 _Step_.

And if that didn't work, he'd try to find someone else. Maybe when he got a genin team, he'd find someone tolerable, someone he could rely on to distract him. Hate was the enemy, had since he was ten the first time. The more he hated, the more of a foothold his other had. The louder the whispers, the less he could control himself, the more likely he was to-

 _Step_.

He had the key to his other's chains, and was always just a breath from opening the lock. His other could get free from both a moment of temporary insanity (which he had all the time in the world to arrange) and just by accident. And if he ever succeeded...

The Pharaoh was dead, Rishid probably was, too, and Ryou...

Ryou might be here. But 'might' wasn't good enough.

 _Turn._

Hyuuga Neji paced back and forth across the room as he thought of how he could best avoid his fate.

* * *

A/N- Sorry for the delay in getting this posted. I could say things are a little hectic for me right now, but the truth is that this is the first time I've uploaded anything with a schedule, and I find it really easy to lose track of the days. I honestly just forgot.

Anyways.

Malik is a fun character to write. So very restless... his thoughts are a little all over the place, aren't they? That's the joy of stream-of-consciousness, though.

I think the reason I chose Neji for him is obvious. I don't think my Malikmuse appreciated the irony, though. Of course, unlike Neji, Malik has a habit of deciding 'Screw destiny!' and has several friends who support him here. There's no such thing as an impossible situation to the Yu-Gi-Oh! crew, after all. It's all just a matter of how hard it is to reach your desired outcome.

Regardless, the Hyuuga family is basically one big pressure cooker, as far as Malik is concerned. Neji compacted and hardened under it, but Malik has a major explossive risk. His number one support base has always been family, but that's gone, and has been replaced by the very source of his problem - talk about a one-eighty.

Thankfully, Hinata's a nice person, and even if you decide these are in separate continuities, she'll do her best to hold her cousin together once she finds out about the problem. That being said, that only changes the situation from Malik being a ticking time bomb to Hinata being a land mine. Less inevitable, sure, but while 'touch her and die' works pretty okay in some situations, Hinata _is_ a ninja. The chances of her spending her entire life without so much as ever being sent to the hospital are incredibly slim.

On the bright side, that might give her a bit more motive to get strong fast, and stay out of danger. Hinata's badass, but she reaches her best when there are people she cares about other than herself on the line. 'I die and I'm dead' is much less motivating to her than 'I die and my cousin snaps and everyone I know and love dies horribly'.

Next update... will probably be next Sunday.

Unless I forget again. But hey, this was all pre-written for once. That last chapter's already done. I'll get it up eventually.


	3. Thought

Mutou Yugi was many things. An idiot wasn't one of them.

He knew there was a reason the villagers didn't like him. That said reason probably had something to do with the Kyuubi attack on his birthday. That he wasn't alone in his own head.

(A deep chuckle reached his ears from within. He pushed it away for now. He'd deal with it later.)

No, he knew what being alone felt like. He'd never have noticed it if he hadn't known how it was to be both ways before, but he did, so he had.

He knew they were connected. The monster fox and the villagers' hate. He wasn't very appreciative, but he was sure his isolation had been inflicted for a good reason, or someone who actually knew what was going on would've stepped in by now.

He hoped.

But despite the adults' prejudice, the children... were another matter. They didn't know. He probably would've heard the exact reason by now, otherwise. Children were pretty bad at keeping secrets. They were probably just following their parents' examples.

It... probably hadn't helped that his past self had proven them right.

He wouldn't lie - he could see how he'd annoyed them. He was lucky he had the support he did, between the hokage (and wasn't that suddenly interesting?), Teuchi, Ayame, and sometimes Iruka and a few of the boys in his class. Between the pranks and the constant insistance of...

(Pestering Sakura, trying to battle Sasuke, and announcing himself the next hokage _constantly_ chose to roll through his mind)

... Yeah. He was lucky to have who he did.

With their hate justified, the other children... obviously left him alone. Thankfully, that was easily changed.

He just needed to mellow out a bit. And his old memories would do that for him.

People could be forgiving, if they saw something worth it. The petty actions of childhood could be forgiven and forgotten eventually.

All it would take was time.

... He was afraid the orange had grown on him, though. Thankfully, he missed his leather, too - maybe he could work something out that used both? He'd seen some of the older shinobi running around wearing weirder...

Uzumaki Naruto relaxed on the hillside, distracted by idle musings, and waited for friends to come to him.

* * *

A/N- Yeah, pretty short, and kinda half-hearted. Yugi's pretty laid back, though, and he Gets friendship. He doesn't have to think about it so much. And his problems are pretty simple right now, if you think about it. Sure, that kind of isolation is incredibly damaging for a child, but... Yugi isn't. A child, that is. He'll be fine from here.

There's a bit of contrast with the other two here as well, if you think about it. Malik and Ryou both have lives heavily veiled in the shadows, so they kinda have to think about them. Yugi... doesn't. He just operates on a smaller scale than they do, when he can, and when he's forced out of that? Watch out.

Yeah. The Akatsuki don't stand a chance.


End file.
